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April 3, 2003
The Under-Privileged
Please forgive this short nerdy rant.
So-called computer security experts advise running one's day-to-day computing activities in a low-privilege account. This makes sense because, as we all know, viruses have all the privileges of the infected user. Also we don't want to be accidentally trashing some important system directory. What's funny is most CS people who run, say Linux, would be horrified at the idea of using the root account for daily work. Yet these same people shamelessly run Windows with administrator privileges (despite the fact that Windows viruses outnumber Linux viruses by about a billion to one).
But I'm not about to rant about those people; my beef is with software developers.
My parents recently bought a new computer. I thoughtfully set up five user accounts on the new computer, one for each member of my family. I heeded the security experts' advice and gave myself the only admin, password-protected account. I taught my parents how to use Windows XP's "Run As" command to perform those tasks deemed admin-worthy. I figured I had thought of everything. I thought wrong.
They also bought an HP Officejet v40 all-in-one fax-scanner-copier-printer. Everything seemed to work fine, until you tried to fax a file directly. A weird, "no connection" error came up. Puzzled, I tried from my account. The fax was sent flawlessly. I tried again from my dad's account: error. Not even the celebrated "Run As" command would work. I checked the manual: nothing. I went to the website: nothing. I scoured the web and newsgroups: nothing. Finally, in a moment of desperation, I phoned tech support, who told me that faxing was one of those holy tasks that only admins could perform.
What is so important and dangerous about faxing that only admins are trusted with the privilege? The tech support guy couldn't answer that, and gave me some bullshit about the registry before suggesting I make everyone admins.
I'm shocked and appalled that software developers, my brethren, are designing software so shoddily. I've seen stuff like this in other pieces of software I use, but there's usually an alternative. But here, it's not like anyone else makes drivers for HP's products.
So I don't know what to do. I've given their tech support a scathing review in an email survey they sent me, so hopefully they'll wise up and update their driver, or at least send me an acknowledgement that their software is to blame, not the fundamental nature of faxing.
In case any of you were wondering, I run as administrator on my own Windows XP machine. Yeah, I'm a hypocrite, but you love me anyway.